David Maybury-Lewis

David Henry Peter Maybury-Lewis (5 May 1929 – 2 December 2007) was a British anthropologist, ethnologist of lowland South America, activist for indigenous peoples' human rights, and professor emeritus of Harvard University.

Born in Hyderabad, Sindh (now in Pakistan), Maybury-Lewis attended the University of Oxford, where he first studied modern languages, and later earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in anthropology. In 1960, he joined the Harvard faculty, and was Edward C. Henderson Professor of Anthropology there from 1966 until he retired in 2004. His extensive ethnographic fieldwork was conducted primarily among indigenous peoples in central Brazil, which culminated in his ethnography among the Xavante, as well as post-modernist renditions. In 1972, he co-founded with his wife Pia Cultural Survival, the leading US-based advocacy and documentation organization devoted to "promoting the rights, voices and visions of indigenous peoples."

Awards Former president of the American Ethnological Society Elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1977 Grand Cross of the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit, Brazil's highest academic honor, in 1997 Anders Retzius gold medal of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, in 1998

Selected bibliography Akwẽ-Shavante Society (1974) Dialectical Societies: The Ge and Bororo of Central Brazil (1979) Prospects for Plural Societies: 1982 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society (1984) The Attraction of Opposites: Thought and Society in the Dualistic Mode (1989) Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World (1992) The Savage and the Innocent (2000) Indigenous Peoples, Ethnic Groups, and the State (2001) The Politics of Ethnicity:Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States (2003)